Are you old enough to remember Nov. 22, 1963?

[Dancing Fire]

Do you believe Oswald was the lone gunman?
Do you believe there was conspiracy?

 

[kenny]

I don't believe Oswald acted alone.
I believe there was a conspiracy and the Warren Commission was a joke.

He could not have been shot from behind.
The exit wound on the back of his head was much larger than the entrance wound on the front.
If JFK was shot from behind Jackie would have crawled into the front seat to grab the brains, not over the trunk.

 

[Smith1942]

I believe this book is the seminal work on the assassination of JFK. I haven't read it, but I've heard that it's incredibly in-depth and that the author basically proves that Oswald acted alone. If you're interested, you might want to read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Case-Closed-Gerald-Posner/dp/1400034620

 

[movie zombie]

Kenny says it for me.
I was a sophomore in high school.

 

[Meezermom]

As an adult now, I don't believe he acted alone.

I was 8 years old at the time.

 

[luv2sparkle]

I was four. I remember laying on the floor watching the t.v. coverage with my family, but that is it.

I don't think he acted alone.

 

[iluvshinythings]

I wasn't born yet in 1963 but I think Oswald was a patsy.

 

[Enerchi]

I was in grade 1 and remember the principal, Mr Lee, coming over the PA system to announce the President of the United States had been shot. This was cause for panic in Toronto in 1963. We were all sent home and then I remember sitting for hours (or it seemed that way to a 5 year old!) waiting for details. Still a strong memory 50 years later. "The end of Camelot", my father used to say.

 

[lulu]

I was 10 and I remember clearly where I was and how I heard. I had, until a week ago, always believed that Oswald acted alone despite reading many books including Posner's. But a week ago I skeptically tuned in to a special on Reelz, The Smoking Gun, which puts forth the theory that shot three was accidentally fired by a Secret Service agent in the follow car who fell backward while holding an assault rifle and trying to return fire at Oswald. The ballistics and math were very convincing. There were numerous witnesses who saw the agent with the gun in his hands. The radiologist at Parkland testified that he was forced to dummy up an xray that concealed the fact that shot three was a hollow point bullet and not full metal jacket like the other two.The Secret Service conducted quite a cover up.

The book is Mortal Error by Bonar Menninger and I am trying to get a copy.

 

[AprilBaby]

I was 4 and it's one of my first memories, seeing the funeral procession on TV. All I remember is the caisson carrying the flag draped casket and the horses pulling it. I probably had no idea what was going on.

 

[Dancing Fire]

I was 5 yrs old and we were still living in HK. I can vaguely remember my older brother whom was 15 yrs old at the time said JFK was assassinated, news traveled slow back then so it could have been 2 days after the assassination.

 

[KaeKae]

No, I wasn't born yet, but I grew up in the years following, so it was always a part of recent history.

I remember my father telling the story of how he learned about it, he was working at a tv station in NYC. Not sure if he heard it on air or from staff, though. Then how the stories/rumors flew after. That night, in Dad's Brooklyn neighborhood, one man managed to convince a bar full of people that so many politicians had died, or could not ascend to the office that NYC's mayor (LaGuardia?) was now going to be president. Yes, that Jerk thought he was very funny. I have a feeling the bar patrons didn't think so the next morning.

While these events didn't effect the country the same way, I do remember when Reagan was shot. I watched the coverage on TV, it was after school. And when the pope was shot, my high school principal (a priest, it was a Catholic school) stopped us all where we were between class bells to announce it and lead the school in a prayer.

 

[HollyS]

I don't believe Oswald acted alone.
I believe there was a conspiracy and the Warren Commission was a joke.

He could not have been shot from behind.
The exit wound on the back of his head was much larger than the entrance wound on the front.
If JFK was shot from behind Jackie would have crawled into the front seat to grab the brains, not over the trunk.

I have to agree with Kenny. Particularly with the last point he made. The bullet that killed JFK was not shot from the same place as the bullet that passed through Kennedy and into John Connelly. And no forensics expert or firearms expert would say so (unless they were told to lie). A person with jr. high knowledge of physics could tell you that it was not possible. A lone stationary gunman is incapable of shooting from two distinctly different angles.

But we don't really want to know what our government (or anyone's government, or any of our law enforcement branches) is truly capable of, so we parade the Warren Commission report as the truth. And the sky is green and the grass is blue.

 

[ksinger]

I don't believe Oswald acted alone.
I believe there was a conspiracy and the Warren Commission was a joke.

He could not have been shot from behind.
The exit wound on the back of his head was much larger than the entrance wound on the front.
If JFK was shot from behind Jackie would have crawled into the front seat to grab the brains, not over the trunk.

I have to agree with Kenny. Particularly with the last point he made. The bullet that killed JFK was not shot from the same place as the bullet that passed through Kennedy and into John Connelly. And no forensics expert or firearms expert would say so (unless they were told to lie). A person with jr. high knowledge of physics could tell you that it was not possible. A lone stationary gunman is incapable of shooting from two distinctly different angles.

But we don't really want to know what our government (or anyone's government, or any of our law enforcement branches) is truly capable of, so we parade the Warren Commission report as the truth. And the sky is green and the grass is blue.

Having jr high physics decades ago does not a terminal ballistics expert make. (Bullets passing through human bodies do follow the laws of physics, but the reactions of the blood and bone to that passing are neither simple nor intuitive.) And while selling guns for 15 years does not make one a certified expert in terminal ballistics either, it does mean my husband - he of the voracious reading habits and laser focus on whatever his interest du decade is, read enormous amounts of pretty arcane stuff (that would send a normal human to sleep or to a rubber room) before he got out of the biz.

That said, he said that anyone who thinks there was a second shooter should read up on terminal ballistics. (Yes, I was glazing over). He mentioned the Thompson-LaGuardia study, the LEAA study (the ballistic gelatin study that made 9mms popluar) - the FBI study after the Miami shootings (sometime in the early 90's - I confess I did not know what incident he was talking about, but it had to do with gunmen still shooting after they'd been hit? - hubs was pretty much out the door when I was asking him this stuff). Then he started talking about the pressure wave set up by a bullet hole (entrance and exit) to a brain case and explaining how the back of JFK's head exploded backwards. The actual bullet was long gone by the time that happened. The blowout came from the pressure wave going through bone and tissue from the forehead exit wound back around to the weakest point - the bullet hole on the back of the skull - thus breaking out the back of the head and fooling jr high students' intuitions. Hubs then started in on explaining how JFK's head jerked back. I continued to glaze over. Then he chuckled and said, "Wow, now THERE'S a light topic for early Sunday morning!"

I'm certainly not setting myself up as any expert, and he and I have never seriously discussed JFK, but it surprises me not that he has a pretty deep knowledge of the physics of anything to do with shootings. He's probably the closest I'll ever get to a real ballistics expert, and if he says he is convinced by his delving into the reports and boring ballistics studies, that the second shooter theory has been thoroughly debunked, I am taking his word for it.

Of course I realize that convinces no one but moi. But my personal take is that there is no way that a conspiracy of that level would have stayed a secret for all this time - the sheer number of people required to keep it makes that all but impossible. Even Bob Woodward revealed Deep Throat in the interests of historical accuracy, is anyone here going to seriously suggest not one of all the people that would have been required to lie about the oh-so-simple findings that any jr high student could figure out, would not have decided to un-lie at some point? It also speaks loads to how people truly view others. Anyone in government would lie like a trooper at the first order to do so, and maintain those lies for the rest of their lives. Of course the person holding that view would NEVER do something like that, because they are different. People in government aren't really subject to the normal rules of human behavior, like having a conscience or ethics or regrets or concerns for history.

But really, genuinely debunking it a million times wouldn't matter because we 'mercuns are increasingly fact-proof these days and we do just LOVE us a good conspiracy theory. Makes us feel all tingly..!!

As for the answer to the original question, I was around, but too busy chewing on interesting new things on the floor to remember the event. I do have a memory stuck in my head from about age 6, of watching the B&W broadcast of some procession of truly great pomp, that involved a flag-draped caisson down a thronged avenue, but I can only assume it was replay from JFK's procession, at the time that Robert Kennedy was killed.

 

[AGBF]

I believe this book is the seminal work on the assassination of JFK. I haven't read it, but I've heard that it's incredibly in-depth and that the author basically proves that Oswald acted alone. If you're interested, you might want to read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Case-Closed-Gerald-Posner/dp/1400034620

For years I read about President Kennedy's assassination, then I ceased to do so for even more years. I have not kept up with the literature on the subject. I do know that this book, also, has been cited as having debunked the conspiracy theory: Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Hardcover by Vincent Bugliosi. I have not read it and do not endorse it. I am simply putting its title out there for those who may be interested in pursuing reading on the topic.

AGBF

 

[HollyS]

"But my personal take is that there is no way that a conspiracy of that level would have stayed a secret for all this time - the sheer number of people required to keep it makes that all but impossible."

While I might agree with this point . . . how do we explain away the many key players in this drama having early and otherwise untimely deaths? That goes a long way in helping "keep a secret" of this magnitude. Oswald, for instance, was murdered immediately. His killer had "terminal cancer" to which he succumbed pretty quickly. And those were just the most obvious deaths - - not the only ones.

I don't like to be a "conspiracy theorist" about anything. But nothing about this event has ever smelled right, looked right, or added up in a normal 2 + 2 = 4 kind of way. Certainly, I have no dog in this fight. But I have to think "Hmmmm" when there are too many odd "facts" or "coincidences". Maybe it's the mystery lover in me.

 

[Dancing Fire]

[quote="ksinger|1385301897|

Of course I realize that convinces no one but moi. But my personal take is that there is no way that a conspiracy of that level would have stayed a secret for all this time - the sheer number of people required to keep it makes that all but impossible. Even Bob Woodward revealed Deep Throat in the interests of historical accuracy, is anyone here going to seriously suggest not one of all the people that would have been required to lie about the oh-so-simple findings that any jr high student could figure out, would not have decided to un-lie at some point? It also speaks loads to how people truly view others. Anyone in government would lie like a trooper at the first order to do so, and maintain those lies for the rest of their lives. Of course the person holding that view would NEVER do something like that, because they are different. People in government aren't really subject to the normal rules of human behavior, like having a conscience or ethics or regrets or concerns for history.

[/quote]
yup, I'd agree with K, too many people would needed be involved and it is hard to keep a secret for so many years.

 

[MissGotRocks]

Keeping it all secret for 50 years is the key to me ultimately believing that there was no conspiracy. I watched yet another special on the assassination that included Clint Hill - the Secret Service agent there with Jackie. He confirmed that she was indeed climbing out of the car to retrieve what had been blown away - I had never heard that officially. He totally believes based on everything that was available to him at the time that Oswald acted alone. He went on to say that for all of the conspiracy theories floated that none of them had ever been proven and he feels that after 50 years, someone would have talked. There was a demo on another show that showed forensic experts recreating the shooting in terms of angles, distance, etc. that showed that it was indeed possible that Oswald acted alone. They explained that when the third bullet hit Kennedy's head, the bone shattered and created the large hole in the back of the head.

I was six years old and in first grade when this happened. The first grade of our school was actually located in a different building than the rest of the school and I have no memory of anyone coming to tell us this or of school closing early. I do remember my parents watching television seemingly round the clock and the pervasive sadness on the faces of all adults. I remember watching with them when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and I remember watching the funeral on television.

Some of us will believe lone shooter, others conspiracy. It's probably an argument that will never be fully put to rest. I understand how it seems too simple to think of one man deciding to do this and then carrying it out. However, life itself seemed much simpler then. Seems like that was the beginning of innocence lost and we've been spiraling downhill ever since. Such a tragedy for our nation.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

I was 8. My Daddy picked me up from school that day because my mother had just had my baby sister on the 17th. He told me that the President had been shot. We went home and my mother had on her blue robe and she was crying even though they weren't on that side politically. Still brings tears to my eyes remembering that day.

I used to think maybe it was a conspiracy, but I am also of the mindset that someone would have sold the story by now if there really was a conspiracy. It is still possible that Oswald was paid to do it by someone else, though.